JiWire’s Q4 Mobile Audience Insights Report
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
The latest Mobile Audience Insights Report from San Francisco-based JiWire, location-based mobile media company reaching the on-the-go audience, examines connected-device adoption, location and mobile-shopping trends and public Wi-Fi trends.
This quarter’s report reveals key themes in mobile shopping behavior and includes a special section about price-comparison behaviors and shopping preferences pertaining to the automobile industry.
Key highlights include:
- Location-Based Advertising – 75% take action after seeing a location-specific message;
- Mobile-Shopping Behavior – 25-34 year-olds are most likely to comparison shop in store and make a purchase;
- Device Adoption – iPad shows the highest increase in market share, growing 7.1% in the U.S.;
- Automobile Purchasing Behaviors – 25% plan to purchase an automobile in the next 12 months.
Location-Based advertising trends show up, including the fact that 80% of the on-the-go audience prefer locally relevant advertising and 75% are more likely to take an action after seeing a location-specific message. The top three actions include clicking on location-specific ads (31%), searching for the nearest location (21%) and/or conducting additional research (21%).
Behavior further varies by smartphone device type. After clicking on an ad, iPhone users are most likely to conduct additional research (22%); Android users search for the nearest location (25%); and Blackberry users immediately make a purchase (21%).
Saying how important location-specific messaging is to consumers today, David Staas, senior vice president of marketing at JiWire, says, “As the on-the-go audience demands locally relevant information, brands need to focus on reaching consumers in and around their locations.”
Comparison shopping on a mobile device while in store has become the number one mobile behaviour of consumers across all ages and gender. Similar to Pew Research’s findings that ’One-third used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store,’ JiWire also found this trend to be true with 34% of on-the-go consumers participating in comparison-shopping behavior. A deeper look reveals that 39% of consumers between the ages of 25-34 are the most likely to comparison shop in store with 13% actually making a purchase on their mobile devices instead of in the store. Other key findings include:
- Consumers are four times more likely to search for reviews than to search for a friend’s recommendation;
- 21% search for coupons while in store.
In a world of constant connectivity, it’s no surprise that consumers rely on the their mobile devices to make purchases. This has caused online coupons to take off and become more popular over the years. In fact, 34% of consumers have redeemed an online coupon in the past 90 days. Additionally, mobile coupon redemption is rapidly nearing newspaper coupon redemption thresholds with 18% redeeming mobile coupons and 22% redeeming newspaper coupons.
Also in the mobile shopping realm, QR codes seem to be a confusing technology. 34% of consumers surveyed don’t know if they have a QR scanner on their mobile device. However, 18% of all consumers have scanned a QR code representing half of the consumers who know they have QR scanners in the first place.
Tablets are having significant market share growth across both the U.S and U.K. The iPad dominated the tablet ecosystem and saw substantial market share gains in the U.S. and in the U.K. for Q4. Likewise, the iOS and the Android have increased in market share. (Windows OS has decreased.) For the first time, the HP Touchpad, Kindle Fire and the Samsung Tablet have entered the Top 10 mobile devices.
The report also looked at brand loyalty and found that iPhone owners are more likely to stay loyal to the Apple brand with 89.3% either owning or planning to purchase an iPad. While the majority of Android users are planning to purchase an iPad, Andriod has made fast strides in gaining customer loyalty considering they just launched their Tablet in June, 2011. However, the Blackberry Playbook sees extremely little brand loyalty, with only 4% of consumers even considering owning one.
On the automobile scene heading into 2012, 25% of the on-the-go audience are planning to purchase a car in the next 12 months and they are using location-based services to assist with their car shopping.
Specifically, women are 50% more likely to schedule an appointment at the dealership than men. They are also more likely to use location-based tools to find a dealer (26%) and check availability of a make or model (25%) while men rank ’reviewing products‘ as most important (29%).
JiWire’s Mobile Audience Insights Report is based on data from approximately 315,000 public Wi-Fi locations, as well as surveying more than 5,000 customers randomly selected across JiWire’s Wi-Fi Media Channel in Oct./11 to Dec./11. JiWire serves advertisements to over 30,000 public Wi-Fi locations in North America and it records data from every ad request.
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